Merry Christmas

Eva and I had a great day today. Grandma made her traditional homemade pizza this year for dinner. It was wonderful as usual. Eva loved the orange and clementine that were in her stocking. She made the coolest sounds every time she saw a new toy to play with. Hans did a great job knowing what to get me too. I got a Zune and I'm still trying to figure out how it works. I love you. I hope everyone had a wonderful christmas.

Lindsey

Missing Hans

I just wanted to say that I miss Hans. The christmas season just isn't the same without your main squeeze. He's wonderful and I just want him to know that. I love you honey.

Lindsey

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy thanksgiving Hans. This was after we were nice and full from a great meal. Eva was a little fussy, so she didn't really smile and I'm half asleep. Anyway, here's proof that i'm growing. Gabriel is starting to be crowded in there.

having fun outside

We took Eva outside to play in the leaves on Saturday. She had just woken up from a nap so she wasn't happy at first, but after a while, we couldn't get her to come back in the house. She had a blast in grandma and grandpa's big back yard.

more fun in Palmyra

On Monday, Eva and I went to Palmyra New York with our friends, the Culters. They are such wonderful people. The Cutler's had us stay with them Corning where they live. We were there from Sunday night until Thursday. We had such a good time with them. It was good to visit the church history sites again too. The picture of Eva in the leaves with Alec was in the sacred grove.

having fun in Palmyra

Lanchaster

Eva and I took a horse and buggy ride from an Amish guy in Lanchaster PA. We had a good time with all the horses and beautiful countryside.

Fun in Philly

Grandma and grandpa took us to Giggleberry Farm outside of Philadelphia. Eva had such a good time riding the carosel.

Halloween Pics

Eva had a wonderful time trick-or-treating. She also had lots of fun with her friends at our house. We had a really fun party with a few families over. The kids bobbed for apples and Eva tried to take everyone's apples for herself. She ate apples all night.

Our trip to Ireland

Eva and I had a wonderful time in Ireland. The weather was beautiful, the grass was green, and the people were very friendly. Eva did a very good job traveling too. I've made an album of our pictures. Go check them out. www.picasaweb.google.com/lindseylokodi. Click on the ireland pictures dated 15 oct.

Lindsey

The piano

ok, here's the story. It started out with me playing the piano. Every time I sat down to play the piano, Eva used to crawl underneath and sit on that ledge and try to play hide and seek with me. Well, now this has just become her designated hiding spot. She camps out here ALL the time. Usually she has a book in her hands and she lays across on her belly looking at the book, but today she decided on the plastic spoon instead. I'm glad she likes this spot because this piano collects dust really bad, but with her laying on it, she does my dusting for me. ha ha ha. I'm getting too big to bend down far enough to dust it myself. So, thanks Eva.

Eva's 1st Birthday

We had a birthday celebration for Eva today so go to http://picasaweb.google.com/lindseylokodi/EvaS1stBirthday and see the pictures. They're great!

Lindsey

Eva and the suitcase

the other day, I started to worry because I couldn't hear Eva and didn't know where she was. I ended up finding her in our third bedroom just sitting on grandma and grandpa's suitcase. No one else was in there, she was just campin' out on that suitcase. This has become her little sanctuary these last few days. I call it her "thinking chair".

Lindsey

Eva at the Library

At story time having fun with her friends.

more pics

I told you she was a ham for the camera. Isn't this a great one. Do you like how dirty she is? I promise I bath her on a regular basis, even though it doesn't look like it.

pics

This was in Wurzburg behind where we used to live. That's Eden Terry looking at us. We had a great day.

Plunger

I don't know what it is about the plunger, but Eva's crazy about it these days. Don't worry, it's never been used in the toilet before. She just carries it around the house all day. She really cracks me up sometimes. That's just water on her shirt by the way. She likes to drink out of big people cups and she must have a hole in her lip because the water goes everywhere.

Check out the Lokodi Blog

Just posted some pics, come get the love here.... http://lokodi.blogspot.com/

utah vacation

I was sorting through which pictures to post of our utah vacation and came across some old pics of Eva, Wow she has really changed alot so i thought I'd post em so you all can see the eveloution of Eva. Notice how she went from sleeping Eskimo baby to advanced functioning eating machine. Some people at work thought Utah was flat, well below are some decent mountain picks. I don't have that many on my camera, when Ralph comes over next, I will download some from his since he took a ton.

Love you guys, all of you, anyone who is reading this.

Hi

I'm horrible at keeping updated. Hopefully we will be able to get internet at home soon. We are working on that right now, but it's really expensive and there is only one company that works with the americans here in Germany. They can charge so much because they know americans will pay for it. I am morally apposed to giving them my business for this reason. So, Hans has to call around to some German places and see if anyone can give us internet even though we live on post. We'll see. Hopefully we can succeed because Eva is getting to the age where she doesn't sit still long enough at the library for me to read my emails let alone respond to any.

Things here are good. We are getting excited to go to Utah for a visit in July. We arrive on the14th and leave on the 28th. We will be bringing Hans' relative with us. He's a young single guy who speaks good english. He's almost done with pharmacy school. He's really nice and I think he'll really love Utah.

Eva is slowly learning how to crawl, but she mostly still rolls everywhere to get where she needs to go. She also just got her first tooth this week. It's still not in all the way, but you can see and feel it now.

Hans is gone for the next month doing some kind of field training. It's been really hard and it has only been two days. I think it's because I know this is what it will be like when he's in Iraq. I think it just hit me really hard last night when I realized he wasn't coming home for dinner. I just started to bawl. But, looking down at Eva made me stop because I know I have to be strong for her sake. Hans does a lot for our little family and it's hard when he's gone because there's a big void. I feel for him. He misses Eva already. I do get to talk to him on the phone though, which helps. Hopefully this time will pass by quickly. The military seems to like to get the family prepared for deployments by taking their spouses away before they even deploy for 15 months...you know...just to get you used to the idea of having them gone. I'm sorry. I must sound bitter. I'm really not, I just am going to miss him a great deal when the time comes.

Sorry for the venting. I feel better now. Love you all! I'll post pictures when I can.

Lindsey

Brussels Belgium

These were all taken in center city Brussels. We used public transportion and our feet to get around for the two days we spent there. Eva got a bumpy ride on the cobblestones. There were several cool museums including a car musuem and a musical instrument museum where they gave you head phones that allowed you to listen to each of the instrument types as you walked from one display to the next. That was my (Hans) favorite, great use of technology. The statue behind Hans of the little boy is called the Manneqin de Pis for obvious reasons. It has a musem that contains all the costumes donated by other countries, and there were many. USA donated an Elvis costume and a Mickey Mouse costume among others. There were many extravagant ones: Samurai costume, Matador, etc. It was very cool, but there are so many businesses that try to profit off of this cool statue that after awhile it seems like a joke that has been told so often it loses its humor.